Billboards Don’t Sell Lawnmowers At YardSales

I had lunch a few weeks ago with a good friend. He’s a small business owner. We’ll call him Rich.

Rich wanted to catch up with me. We’ve been friends for a while – maybe 8 years? But, he definitely also wanted to talk about how I could possibly help him with his small business marketing through social media – and through more traditional marketing.

I LOVE these kinds of conversations! I’m such a marketing freak and technology geek that I get fired up just talking about how it all can work in business. So, we talked and talked about implementing a pretty classic marketing campaign. When I was active as a Realtor and then as a real estate broker, I used these same classic marketing ideas to great effect.

Every business is unique, but ALL businesses have to begin with the end in mind. You have to know what the goal is before you start your marketing plan.

Do you want 100 new customers in 6 months? Or would 5 ‘perfect’ customers be even better?

Is $100,000 in new revenue the goal? or is it more like $2 million?

Note: everyone wants to over-complicate this. Just decide what you WANT and then go for it. Yes, it should be reasonable and possible to attain, but it can (and should) be ambitious.

Just Do it!

Now that we know what we want, the plans are pretty simple.  Execution is the trick.

So, Rich decided that 10 new clients in the next 6 months would be great.  His clients tend to bring repeating business and so those 10 clients should easily generate $50,000 in additional revenue.

He wants these new clients to come from a ‘warm’ list of known prospects, so I suggested that we develop a plan to touch or connect with these known contacts every week for 10 to 12 weeks.  This includes phone calls, emails, print mail as well as face to face contact.  (psst.. this kind of ‘constant contact’ is a known method to increase results)

To get 10 new clients from a warm list, experience tells us that we’d probably need at least 100 potential customers on the list.

Job #1 = Take the time to make the list of 100.  It’s not sexy work, but it’s the critical starting point.

Lots of people fail to execute at this point.  Don’t back off.  Make a good solid list with very complete and accurate info.

Once you have your list, you simply execute your plan.  The odds are very strongly in your favor to hit your goals!

Rich didn’t do any of this (yet).  He bought a billboard instead.  It won’t work